How can we recover bookings after a very poor holiday let review?

[holidaylethelp]

Any advice very welcome and am prepared to be flamed! We have a holiday let in Norfolk near Cromer, quite a long way from where we live. We have always loved it there and put everything we had into buying a small holiday let about 3 years ago. We got a agent and cleaner and it is rented out for about half the year, in quiet times we go and let family and friends use the house. Our cleaner has always been a little hit and miss, at the start of the summer the feedback we had was good mostly 5 star reviews, but as the summer has gone on we have had some really negative feedback saying that the kitchen and bathroom were dirty. We offered compensation and spoke to the cleaner - the guests were happy. We told the agent we wanted to get a different cleaning company and they said they would start looking for alternatives. We have now had an absolutely dire review from the next guest posted on the booking website, saying items in the house were broken and it was very dirty. The agent is annoyed as they contacted the guests on the day they arrived to see if everything was alright but they did not respond. My wife went to see the house today and it was dirty and items in the house had been broken - for example broken scissors, dvd's snapped in two - of course items do get broken and we expect that but we would never leave broken items in the house and always replace items and never charge the guest for breakages, Sometimes guests hide damage (probably thinking we would charge them) and we do not have the chance to replace the item quickly. This guest of course has a right to complain, holiday time is very precious and I am upset that their stay was not perfect. We have sacked the cleaning company, but I am so sad that we put so much into the property, have had many happy guests, and now no one will rent the house going forward because of this awful review. Any ideas how to approach this?

Can you respond to the review? Explain what you've said here and how you've put it right? That would satisfy me.

publicly reply to the review.

Offer it at mates rates to f/ f in turn for better reviews?

Reply to the review that they were correct, you rely on a cleaning and management company who did not do their job, you have now visited the property, agree with what they’ve said and have fired the company responsible so these issues will now be rectified and apologise that their state as ruined and offer them to come again or a partial refund.

Agree with previous posters to reply to the review. You also need to get to grips with the cleaning and maintenance going forward. There's no point in trying to get more bookings if you haven't got good housekeeping staff and a proper cleaning and maintenance schedule in place. Getting friends and family to stay and review it might work.

I would ensure a very apologetic reply is put to the last review, and ensure you say that action has been taken following recent poor reviews this summer and you have now changed cleaning companies. You'll need to speak to the agent, I assume to post the response...I'd write it out in full, make sure you're happy with it, then tell the agent to post exactly what you've written.

And as an ongoing action, you really need to be going to stay there yourselves every now and then in peak season to check on the property for both cleaning standards and breakages.

What’s the agent doing? Twiddling their thumbs? They should be going to check on the property, this is why you pay them. No use sending some random cleaner in.

Reply to review. Say you are sorry and that you now have new cleaners. Accept accountability and say what changes you have made

I've seen terrible reviews on Air BnB and they do get bookings. My neighbour has a few 1 star reviews and is booked up.

It is a nightmare finding good cleaners. I just want to go on holiday but can't find anyone to cover for me.

Sell up to someone local who would actually live in it. Nothing says "I love the scenery but feel utter contempt for the people who live there" like pricing the locals out of their own villages by turning a dwelling into a short-term rental owned by someone who lives miles away so even the rental income is spent outside of the area.

Agree, it is the replies that I read that make up my mine.

Agree re replying to the review but really this is part of the issue of trying to run a business far away from where you live. You don't have the local connections to find and vet contractors and step in immediately to sort things out when they go wrong.

Good grief.

Wish I had any rental income to spend! All spent on local builders, electricians, plumbers - all lovely guys, seem very happy we brought the house and spend our money on their trades...

Thanks to everyone for their advice - will def post a response and hope for the best!

Include in the response something like “our agent did try to contact you on your first day to check that all was ok but didn’t hear from you - it’s a shame we couldn’t have put things right earlier in your stay’

I take note when complaining guests were themselves PITAs.

Makes no difference to how I read reviews. A dirty let is a big no no for me. It being clean is a top priority. I don't want a dirty let put right, I want it to be clean on arrival. Broken things are different

🙄

We've been in a similar situation with a bad run of people complaining about the cleaning of our holiday let. We have been with a new, smaller cleaning company for a season and have lots of 5* reviews. The new company leaves a note so that the guest can contact them, if the cleaning is not up to scratch. It takes a while to recover, but you will.
We reply every time to our reviews.
Another point, we do try to visit often to do a bit of maintenance regularly. Good luck, going forward and hope you find a better, caring cleaning company.
To the poster saying about people buying holiday homes, as the OP has said, we too have spent thousands on local trade plus our guests and us too, eat out often and pay into the tourist pot!

clearly you need to live close enough to inspect it after/before each rental.
and please don't give anyone the bs of "how you love it" if you loved it you would live nearby and manage it accordingly.
hiring out the hard work is simply lazy.

You should have gone in person to look at the place after the first poor review not left it until the end of the season. Clearly there was an issue if you had several poor reviews in a row. This is your responsibility even if you pay a company to manage it.
You may need to torch the listing and start again with a new one if that's allowed in the site's rules.

How you respond is key. If you are apologetic and explain how you have put things right, that reassures me that if anything were to go wrong on my stay it would be dealt with appropriately. Big tick for me.

@holidaylethelp responding after the fact. No matter what you say, as I’d never return or recommend to a friend is pointless.

I had a 2.5 out of 10 review for cleanliness because they: found a plastic water bottle under the couch and the bin smelled a bit. It’s odd because one review will give us a 10/10 and the next will find some fault. One guest even left a day early because she found step ladder behind the lodge! She said she felt ‘unsafe’. There’s nothing but a two foot space then a hedge (there’s a farm on the other side) and the ladder is kept there out of the way (used for cleaning the gutters etc). So people can be weird.
And before somebody has a go at me (looking at you @selffellatingouroborosofhate) it’s a lodge on a holiday park and can’t be sold for full time occupation or rented for more than 30 days.

You should've sorted it after the first bad review rather than keep taking money for a substandard let.